Choosing a Weight Loss Plan that Works For You
Winning the battle of your weight loss struggles and becoming healthy requires determination to stick to a weight loss plan that works for you. So many diets are structured for you to lose – not weight – but the battle itself.
To really be successful, lots of planning and thinking needs to come before you begin to meet your goals. The plan must be nutritional and provide your body with nutrients and vitamins you need to avoid future health problems.
You’ll also need an exercise plan, along with the diet, to keep your metabolism purring and so you have the energy needed to meet your weight loss goals. Any plan should be considered carefully and your goals should be attainable.
If you have a lot of weight to lose, it’s best to divide your weight loss goals into small increments. Reaching those minor goals will provide the motivation you need to keep going with the ultimate goals in mind.
The 5 Best Diet Programs – Choose the Best One for You
Diet plans can be fads that come and go. Many sound incredible, touting that you can lose 10 pounds in 10 days or even more outrageous claims. But, there are five particular plans that have lasted over time and continue to help people lose weight and keep it off.
You may have tried one of these programs and it didn’t work for you. The likely reason for the failure is that you didn’t choose the right one for you. If you just dive in to a diet plan without thought or preparation, failure is more apt to happen.
But, before you decide on one, give some thought to your lifestyle and what will work for you. If you travel a great deal, that should be taken into consideration. You may have to eat at restaurants, so you’ll need a diet plan that makes it easy to choose from the menus.
The top 5 diet plans aren’t fly-by-night plans that help you lose weight at first and when you can’t stand the restrictions and deprivation anymore, you go back to your old ways of eating and you gain even more weight.
The top 5 diet plans help you become and remain healthy with your weight loss goals intact. Here they are:
Mediterranean
Based on what researchers have found to be the healthiest population in the world – the Mediterranean diet is a plan that will give you food for your health and also food to take care of cravings. You can even have wine on this plan.
Paleo
The Paleo diet is based on the food our cave-dwelling ancestors lived on. Think of all the foods that might have been available for cavemen or stone-age people. Berries, plant-based food and meats and fish constituted the diet that our ancestors lived on.
South Beach
The South Beach diet plan has been around for years and offers a chance to reboot your metabolism and give you more energy by concentrating on a diet of high protein and low carbohydrates.
Weight Watchers
This diet plan has also been around since 1963, but the new Weight Watchers plan has been revamped. Now, you don’t have to travel to meetings at a certain location, but can use computer and cell phone to keep in touch with counselors and motivators. You don’t have to spend so much time counting points either with all the zero point foods that are available.
Low-Carb
Carbohydrates found in grains and some vegetables and fruits are very limited and protein and fat are emphasized. One huge benefit of the low-carb diet plan is that it lowers the risk for type-2 diabetes.
Any of these diets will help you lose weight if you follow them closely. Choose one that will fit in best to your lifestyle and weight loss goals so you won’t be tempted to derail the diet plan and go back to old, unhealthy habits.
How to Avoid Diet Derailment
According to weight loss experts who have thoroughly researched the matter, there are three top reasons that your carefully-planned diet can get derailed:
1. You get tired of the diet.
All of the thinking and preparation involved in dieting can wear you out. So can the food.
2. You can’t eat your comfort foods.
Unless you plan a time (or it’s included in your diet plan) to eat foods you really love once in awhile, you won’t be excited about remaining on the diet – no matter how much weight you’re losing.
3. The diet plan is too restrictive.
Salads and water isn’t too appetizing on a constant basis. Even if your diet is more permissive about a variety of food, you may feel deprived.
You know yourself better than anyone or better than any diet label gives you. It’s important to dig deep within yourself before you even choose or begin a diet to find out what your diet deal breakers are.
You may be defeated before you begin a diet if you don’t give some thought to it, so plan to make it successful by addressing the issues. For example, if you travel a lot, you probably don’t want a diet plan where a great deal of preparation and cooking is involved.
You’ll need to know how to eat out and which foods on the menus help you follow your diet without feeling deprived. Some diets fail because people can’t resist going back to their old patterns of eating.
You might do well for awhile, losing weight, exercising and enjoying better health and more energy. You feel so good that you can’t imagine going back to your old ways. Diet backslides happen when you’re stressed, out of time, on vacation or a myriad of other situations.
Stopping for fast food when you don’t have time to cook a healthy dinner or eating at your favorite Mexican restaurant where they serve the best chips and salsa can creep back into your lifestyle before you even know it’s happening.
Since habits – especially eating habits – are repeated continuously on a subconscious level, it’s important that you eat on a conscious level. You know what your defeating habits are and when you decide to defeat them on a conscious level, you can succeed.
If those cravings do get the best of you, think about substituting a food that’s healthier, but gives you the same satisfaction. For example, if you’re craving ice cream, have some low-calorie substitutes such as fudgsicles in the freezer and opt for that instead.
You’ll also want to keep away from places that you can be tempted. Your favorite restaurant that features your favorite dessert or high-calorie entre could set you up to return to your old habits.
Don’t Overdo It at First and Risk Failure
When you become enthusiastic about a weight loss and exercise program, it’s easy to jump into the plan full-force and give it everything you’ve got all at once. The problem with that much exuberance is that you may soon become tired, feel deprived and your mindset for success wanes.
You may have set your short-term goals too high. Reassess your goals and be realistic in your expectations. When you begin to feel discouraged and are tempted to fall back into old habits, it’s best to leave the diet plan for a couple of days and plan when to return.
Don’t use a setback as a reason to give up on the diet altogether. An all-or-nothing mindset to a diet plan is often an obstacle rather than a positive way to think. Don’t be unshakable about the diet.
So many changes in your lifestyle can be daunting and you may need to take a day or two off so you can resume the diet with enthusiasm. Take small steps rather than changing everything about your lifestyle all at once.
Consider asking for support from a family member or friend when you feel like giving up. You can expect to have those feelings during your quest to lose weight and you may give in once in awhile. Just don’t let it derail your entire plan.
Using Your Mindset to Overcome Weight Loss Obstacles
Developing a mindset that helps you grow rather than digress is the best method to gain success in everything you do. Weight loss, in particular requires that your mindset remains positive and doesn’t allow negative thoughts to interfere with success.
Think about some of the obstacles you might face when you take on a diet and exercise plan. Excuses such as being too busy, too weak, bad genetics or past failures can be exorcised from your mindset by refusing to accept them.
Instead, immediately replace the negative thought with a positive one. Achieving a positive mindset won’t suddenly happen just because you want it. Some of the excuses for failure involve emotions that are difficult to cast out of your mind.
They’re like old habits that are hard to break – they just keep coming back to taunt you. A couple of good ways to develop a positive mindset is with a vision board and affirmations.
Vision boards are visual displays of what we want in life – how we envision ourselves in the future. Vision boards are easy and inexpensive to create and there are lots of suggestions online that will guide you through the process.
Affirmations are simply positive phrases that you repeat to yourself both when you are already in a positive mindset and when you are on the verge of failure. If you can’t think of anything, there are lots of online help sites.
Choose or create one that especially calls out to you. Your mindset can help you take the weight off or encourage you to put it on. A positive mindset is the catalyst to give you a winning attitude rather than a defeated one.
In other words, you can think yourself thin. One of the biggest threats to your positive mindset is impatience. You want to lose weight fast and it’s just not coming off as rapid as you want.
Our fast-paced society with Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter give us immediate contact with others – so we aren’t happy when we have to wait for the weight loss we so desperately want.
Unfortunately, our bodies only get the best results when you lose the weight at a slow pace. If you lose weight too rapidly, you risk losing muscle and not fat. A rapid loss might also be due to water weight.
Losing lean tissue or muscle makes your metabolism slow down and burn less calories. You’ll also be less energetic. Put yourself in a positive light rather than concentrating on losing weight in a hurry. When you picture yourself thin, your mind takes it from there.
How Technology Can Help You Win with Any Diet Plan
Technology has made huge strides in the past few years and helping people lose weight is one of its biggest successes. Now, you don’t need to keep that resolution to lose weight in your head.
It’s too easy to ignore or forget. Digital devices galore are available to get you motivated and track your progress every step of the way. There are apps you can download to your phone or other device to help you successfully manage your fitness and health goals.
Some of these apps can track the goals and progress of several people, so your family can also use it to set and complete goals. There are many ways to customize your own goals with these apps to add another dimension to your weight loss resolutions and better ensure your success.
Besides digital devices, social media is known to be a great way to harness all the power of the internet. There are weight loss groups you can join online anonymously that will support you and make suggestions to make the lifestyle changes easier.
When you share goal successes and setbacks with others you become more committed to reaching weight loss goals and keep on track with any diet and exercise plan you choose.
Blogs are also a good way to interact with others about weight loss. Most weight loss programs have online blogs where advice and suggestions are offered and you’ll be able to see that you’re not the only one who has trouble following a diet plan.
Other technological devices and strategies that can help you with weight loss goals include wearable watches, glasses, jewelry and even clothes. Smart glasses are receiving lots of attention lately.
These glasses are great for cycling. They can report on how much distance you’ve traveled and heart rate as well as maps and routes to choose from – and more. Tech glasses made for swimming are also available. They can tell you the number of laps, distance, calories burned, heart rate and more.
Tech jewelry is fairly inexpensive and comes in the form of attractive necklaces that transfers your voice into recorded text. It tracks your activity and pairs with various apps to let you meet your fitness goals and it can even look up recipes and control other things such as locks.
Fitness smartwatches have been around for a while, but now they’re more sophisticated and can provide more information than ever. Just about any fitness tracking you can think of is included with these smartwatches.
You can choose from several apps that can be downloaded to your device. The watch transfers your data to the app and you can track it any time you wish. It monitors such fitness information as sleep monitoring, heart monitor, nutrition logs, water consumption and amount of calories going in and those going out.
We all have to wear clothing – so why not choose wearable technology clothing with embedded sensors that will track your fitness journey the same as a smartwatch or smart jewelry.
Dresses that change color, wearable touchpads and self-lacing shoes are all part of the technology trend, but the health and fitness industry is the main focus today. It’s difficult enough to lose weight on your own.
Why not use everything technology has to offer to help you set goals, track and report your progress, keep us safe and even reward us when we reach our goals? Check out the latest technological devices for fitness online.